The War for the West Rages On

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Cliven BundyCreditJohn Locher/Associated Press

By Betsy Gaines Quammen

Jan. 29, 2016

Bozeman, Mont. — THE armed siege of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon, which continued Friday even after one of the occupiers was killed in a confrontation with authorities, is the latest battle in a Nevada family’s war with the federal government.

It shows little sign of abating.

Anger over the federal government’s control of hundreds of millions of acres across the West has been smoldering for over a hundred years. The takeover was part of a campaign that has its roots in the settlement of the West and the desire to transfer control of these lands — the national forests, parks, wildlife refuges and rangeland — to the states.

The Oregon confrontation was led by two sons of Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who led an armed standoff of his own against federal authorities in 2014 over his illegal grazing on land owned by the Bureau of Land Management.

The difference between the Bundys and many other ranchers who rage over federal control of land is that they believe God is on their side.

I visited the Bundy family last year on their remote ranch and melon farm in southeastern Nevada for research I’m conducting on the history of Mormon culture and the use of public land. The Bundys are Mormons and interested me because of their extreme position against the government and their engagement of militia groups in their cause.

They were welcoming and eager to answer my questions. What emerged in our three hours of conversation in the living room of their modest ranch house was a passion and a sense of entitlement that they believe is anchored in their deep history in the region. They also embrace a strange amalgamation of Mormonism, libertarianism and a right-wing reading of the Constitution.

The Bundys trace their roots to some of the first Mormons who settled along an isolated and rugged stretch of the Virgin River, in a place so desolate that it seems impossible to make a living there. But they did, and in doing so, they put their stamp on it, in the Bundys’ view.

From the moment their ancestors’ horses took a sip of water or ate the grass, “a beneficial use of a renewable resource” was created, Cliven Bundy told me.

“That’s how our rights are created,” he explained. “So now we have created them and we use them, make beneficial use of them, and then we protect them. And that’s sort of a natural law, and that’s what the rancher has done. That’s how he has his rights. And that’s what the range war, the Bundy war, is all about right now, it’s really protecting those three things: our life, liberty and our property.”

In Mormon doctrine, the American Constitution is a divinely inspired text that must be protected. This view goes back to the days of the prophet Joseph Smith, who believed the Constitution existed to provide religious freedom and agency, the right of people to choose how they lived.

In 1840, Smith warned that “this Nation will be on the very verge of crumbling to pieces and tumbling to the ground when the Constitution is upon the brink of ruin; this people will be the Staff upon which the Nation shall lean and they shall bear the Constitution away from the very verge of destruction.”

The Bundy family sees itself as that Staff. Mr. Bundy carries in his pocket a copy of the Constitution, which he believes draws its inspiration from the Bible. He told me: “Don’t we believe that Jesus Christ is basically the author of the Bible? Well, if the Constitution is inspired, who is the author? Wouldn’t that author be Jesus Christ again?”

Mr. Bundy’s reading of the Constitution has been heavily influenced by the work of W. Cleon Skousen, a Mormon, fervent anti-Communist and right-wing political thinker who believed that most federal landholdings are unconstitutional.

The Los Angeles Times reported that many Bundy followers in Oregon carried with them a copy of the Constitution annotated by Skousen. “That’s where I get most of my information from,” Cliven Bundy told the paper.

But while Joseph Smith focused on the First Amendment as a bulwark against the persecutions of Mormons, the Bundys are focused on the 10th Amendment, which they believe severely restricts the federal government’s power to possess land. (Leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have condemned the Oregon takeover and said in a statement that they were “deeply troubled by the reports that those who have seized the facility suggest that they were doing it based on scriptural principles.”)

The Bundy worldview aligns closely with the states’ rights movement and efforts in the West to transfer federal lands to the states and local governments. Just last week, eight ranchers in Utah announced that they would stop paying grazing fees to the federal government and put the money into escrow until ownership of the federal land they lease is resolved. “This is as an act of civil disobedience in response to a long trail of abuses,” a lawyer connected to the effort told The Salt Lake City Tribune.

Now the Bundy sons are in jail, and one of them, Ammon, in a statement issued by his lawyers, urged his followers to go home and hug their families. But a subsequent post on the Facebook page of the Bundy Ranch that has since been deleted issued this call to arms:

“ALERT! From Ammon’s wife, Lisa: Ammon would not have called for the patriots to leave. We have lost a life but we are not backing down. He didn’t spill his blood in vain! Hold your ground … Ranchers come and stand! … Militia come and stand!”

The war with the federal government over the West seems far from finished.

Betsy Gaines Quammen is a doctoral candidate at Montana State University.